The White House this week launched the Startup America Partnership to bring together top entrepreneurs, start-up firm funders, CEOs, university presidents, foundations, and other leaders to help entrepreneurial companies start or grow. Partners (including corporations, foundations, startup funders, CEOs and others) will contribute funds to existing proven models or develop new programs and efforts to help entrepreneurs.
Chaired by AOL founder Steve Case, the Partnership will receive launch funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Case Foundation, and act as an independent private-sector alliance intended to increase the development, prevalence and success of innovative, high-growth U.S. firms.
To date, more than a dozen firms and organizations have joined the Startup America Partnership. They include the following commitments:
- Increased corporate investment and support for startups from companies such as Intel, HP, IBM, Facebook, and others, including:
- Intel Capital will commit $200 million of new investment in U.S. companies. Senior Intel leadership will also serve the Startup America Partnership and share best practices from years of successful programs designed to support Intel portfolio companies.
- IBM will invest $150 million in 2011 to fund programs that promote entrepreneurs and new business opportunities in the United States.
- Newlett-Packard Co.is investing more than $4 million in 2011 in the HP Learning Initiative for Entrepreneurs (HP LIFE), a global program launched in 2007 that uses educational and technology outreach aimed at helping entrepreneurs and small business owners create and grow commercial opportunities.
- Facebook will launch Startup Days, a series of 12 to 15 events around the country designed to provide entrepreneurs with access to expertise, resources and engineers to help accelerate their businesses.
- To foster entrepreneurship through higher education, as part of its overall $50 million commitment to entrepreneurship, The Blackstone Charitable Foundation has announced a $5 million expansion of the Blackstone LaunchPad programpiloted at two Detroit colleges. Based on a model created by the University of Miami, LaunchPad will be replicated over the next five years in five other distressed regions around the country.
- The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), a nonprofit that provides entrepreneurship education for at-risk high school students from low-income communities, is launching new programs supporting young entrepreneurs and their teachers. The Pearson Foundation is working with NFTE to build its Digital Teacher Network, a free online community for teacher collaboration and training that will be by NFTE's certified teachers and any educator interested in entrepreneurship. Google is sponsoring two new efforts in NFTE's Bay Area programs: The Flat Classroom Exchange will allow local educators to team-teach the NFTE program in real time and leverage each teacher's individual expertise.